[pvrusb2] Hello; and empty files problem....

[Rod Smith]

Hi,

I recently purchased a Hauppauge WinTV PVR-USB2 for use with MythTV. For the 
most part, the device is working fine (and thanks to Mike Isely for the 
driver!); however, ocasionally it runs into a problem. The dmesg output 
and /var/log/messages file contain the following error messages:

pvrusb2: ***WARNING*** device's encoder appears to be stuck (status=000000003)
pvrusb2: Encoder command: 0x81
pvrusb2: Giving up waiting.  It is likely that this is a bad idea...
pvrusb2: Error recovery initiated
pvrusb2: Retrying device reconfiguration

Thereafter, MythTV records 0-length files, for both the current and subsequent 
recordings; apparently the error recovery attempted by the driver was 
unsuccessful or MythTV has problems resyncing after the fact. Unloading the 
driver and reloading it (via rmmod and modprobe, respectively) fixes the 
problem.

I've run across references to similar problems in the mailing list archives 
and elsewhere, but in those cases either additional error messages are 
present (those five lines are the only indications of problems in my logs) or 
it seems to be a relatively harmless blip.

So -- is there a workaround for this? I'm sure I could write a script to 
monitor /var/log/messages and restart the driver when necessary, but if 
there's an existing solution I'd rather use it.

Obligatory hardware/software information:
- 3.06GHz Celeron-D
- Biostar PT880 Pro-A7C motherboard with VIA PT880 PRO/VT8237R chipset
- 24xxx PVR-USB2 hardware
- I've also got a pcHDTV 3000 card in this system
- 32-bit 2.6.20 Linux kernel, locally compiled from stock sources
- pvrusb2 driver from above 2.6.20 kernel
- firmware as delivered in my hardware's retail package; md5sums:
  - d85cb08382395390dc95ac6ebc2205f9  v4l-cx2341x-enc.fw
  - c5749da3eb141e87634ff1e2c1e6f390  v4l-cx25840.fw
  - 34d213394328adf78e2fc9f1411691b0  v4l-pvrusb2-24xxx-01.fw
- Ubuntu 6.10
- MythTV 0.20, as delivered with Ubuntu

I'm willing to upgrade firmware or drivers if these would improve matters; or 
if there are some other tools to help, I can try them. I can also recompile 
my kernel, if specific options might help.

If anybody's got any pointers, I'd appreciate them. Thanks.

-- 
Rod Smith, rodsmith at rodsbooks.com
http://www.rodsbooks.com
Author of books on Linux, FreeBSD, and networking